If Saturday night’s baseball game had been an ordinary game, we might have said it was settled in the first inning, when a double, a single, and a dropped fly ball put the Cubs up 2-0 against the Dodgers, and the pitcher who’d shut them out the last time, Clayton Kershaw. Already the Cubs had one more run than they’d need.
I was telling a friend of mine about these women. He understood. His son-in-law’s grandfather was a Cubs fan, he said, and when the old man died he was determined to scatter his ashes in Wrigley Field. Correctly assuming the Cubs wouldn’t give him permission, he collected his grandfather’s ashes in his pockets, bought a ticket to a game, and slowly circulated along the rail, letting the ashes drift through his fingers onto the grass.
Thousands of fans without tickets gathered outside Wrigley Saturday night to see if next year would be this year. Yes, yes it actually might. But beware. Once faith is rewarded, if it ever is, what becomes of faith?
